Net Revenue and the Orders Report

Net revenue

Whenever you see the term
net revenue, it is calculated by taking the total gross sales and deducting refunds, taxes*, shipping*, and fees* from the given period.

The idea of net revenue is to give you an idea of how much money you actually received.

Orders report

The orders report however is there to give you insight about orders made in a given period, rather than revenue itself. So in that report, you'll see the term
net sales. It's quite similar to how net revenue is calculated (see the formula above), but with one significant difference: It only deducts refunds for orders made in the given period, and when the refund happened does not matter.

An example

For example, you're looking at the
orders report for October 2017. In October 2017, there was an order for $100 that was later refunded in November 2017. The
net sales amount for that order when looking at October 2017 will be
$0 (even though the refund happened in November - outside of the period you're looking at).

If we took that same example but were looking at the
revenue report instead, the
net revenue in October 2017 would be
$100, since the refund only happened in November 2017. If we were then to look at the revenue report for November 2017, and there were no new orders or other refunds in that period, the net revenue for the period would be
-$100.